A grave in Gaza

Chapter 20

Omar Yussef dreamed of death. He sweated through the explosion that killed James Cree, shaken by the shuddering blast and swathed in the flames, jarred by the twisted metal of the UN Suburban, broken by the stones the local boys hurled. He choked through the last breaths of Bassam Odwan’s life, even as the blood pumped from his severed fingertips. He recoiled as an antique rifle discharged its bullet into his rib, fragments of bone tearing his lungs. The shot came again and again, each time thrusting him into the mattress. Death wasn’t following him any more. It was sharing his bed, not like a wife, but like an illicit lover, jealous and angry, giving him no sleep.

The telephone rang. The rifle bullets ripped his ribcage and the phone rang on. He rolled to the nightstand and picked up the receiver. He couldn’t speak; he gasped into the phone.

“Abu Ramiz, is that you?”

Another gasp. The shots continued. He whimpered.

“Is everything okay? This is Doctor Najjar, from the morgue. Is that gunfire?”

Omar Yussef looked around. I’m in my hotel room, he thought, but it was a vague realization.

“What’s that noise, Abu Ramiz?” the doctor asked.

“I was being shot.”

“Abu Ramiz?” The doctor was alarmed.

Omar Yussef put the receiver on the pillow and wiped the sweat from his face with the end of the sheet. There was gunfire. He looked at the red light of the digital clock on the nightstand: 6:00 a.m. He picked up the phone again. “Yes, that’s gunfire outside. I don’t know anything about it. I was having a bad dream.”

“I’m sorry to call you so early, but I’ve been at work all night and I’m going home now. I wanted you to know what I discovered, as soon as possible.”

Omar Yussef cleared his throat and pushed himself up onto his elbow, trying hard to leave his nightmare behind. “Thank you.”

“This must remain between you and me, Abu Ramiz. As you know, the official cause of Bassam Odwan’s death is that he suffered a sudden heart attack in his jail cell. However, my initial suspicion that he died of asphyxia was correct. A blockage in his airway suffocated him.”

Omar Yussef sat upright on the edge of his bed. “Odwan choked on his food?”

“It wasn’t food. You remember that the inside of his mouth and the upper part of his throat were covered in tiny cuts? Further down in the trachea, blocking the air, I found some sort of glass.”

“Glass?”

“Actually, it’s something I’ve never seen in Gaza. But once, when I was in a hotel bar in Jordan, I saw something like it. I think it’s the stopper from one of those crystal bottles that people use to store alcohol.”

Omar Yussef thought of General Husseini’s collection of Bohemian crystal. “A decanter?”

“Is that what they’re called? It’s been carved into many tiny flat surfaces, so that it reflects the light like a precious stone. But between each of the surfaces it’s almost as hard and sharp as the cutting edge of a diamond. It was big and, as it was forced down his throat, it caused the lacerations. Then it choked him.” The doctor paused. “That shooting sounds very close, Abu Ramiz.”

Omar Yussef stood and moved toward the window to draw back the curtain. The phone cord wouldn’t stretch far enough. The gunfire outside was a deafening, bass volley with the light chimes of shattering glass laid over it. “I can’t see just now. The curtains are closed,” he said, raising his voice to be heard over the gunbattle. “Was Odwan’s body brought to you directly from jail?”

“Military Intelligence brought him. He could’ve arrived from anywhere.”

Omar Yussef listened to the shooting. It seemed to be concentrated on General Husseini’s house across the street. From anywhere. Even from there, he thought. He thanked the doctor and hung up.

He crept along the wall and lifted the curtain. A dozen jeeps were drawn up on the street outside the hotel, a mixture of camouflage and flat, dun paintwork. The men taking cover behind the jeeps were dressed like the Saladin Brigades squad that had kidnapped Wallender: stocking caps pulled down to disguise their features, camouflage jackets and black T-shirts, military pants and heavy work-boots. They fired Kalashnikovs and M-16s at Husseini’s home.

The windows on every floor of General Husseini’s building were shot out. Omar Yussef squinted into the dusty dawn light. Muzzle flashes from the third floor of the Husseini home jolted through the dirty, gray air.

There was a knock at the door. Omar Yussef pulled on his trousers and answered it. Khamis Zeydan pushed past him, his shirt open over the gray hair on his chest, the white fringes on his bald head sticking up still from the pillow.

“What the hell is this?” Khamis Zeydan said. He coughed and it was as though he had sprayed an atomizer filled with Scotch around the room.

Omar Yussef’s nostrils flared at the whisky on his friend’s breath and he thought that perhaps he wasn’t the only one whose nightmares had been disturbed by the shooting. “Did you come straight from dawn prayers?”

Khamis Zeydan rubbed his face. “May Allah forgive you, it’s too early for sarcasm.”

“Something’s happening at Husseini’s place,” Omar Yussef said.

“Son of a whore. I can’t see it from my side of the hotel.”

“The management gave the Revolutionary Council people the nice sea view.”

“But you get the view of the fireworks.” Khamis Zeydan lifted the end of the curtain. “Fuck your mother,” he said, with a tone of wonder.

Omar Yussef peered outside from the other end of the curtain. “What’s going on?”

“It looks like the Revolutionary Council convened for a special session.”

“You think this is something between Husseini and al-Fara?”

“Maybe. Or perhaps the Saladin Brigades decided to show Husseini that they know who killed Bassam Odwan.” Khamis Zeydan grinned. “Could be a joint maneuver: the Saladin Brigades and Colonel al-Fara’s men.”

From behind one of the jeeps, a camouflaged gunman brought out a shoulder-launched missile. “By Allah,” Khamis Zeydan said, his eyes wide.

“What’s that?”

“A LAW anti-tank missile.”

The missile took off from the man’s shoulder with a sound like a demon’s inhalation and smashed into the third floor, where Omar Yussef had breakfasted the previous day with General Husseini.

The firing from within Husseini’s building halted. Even the gunmen on the street stopped to marvel at the destruction. Some of them stood up, their assault rifles held in one hand, pointed to the ground. Omar Yussef saw them laughing at one of their colleagues who had covered his ears against the blast. Another gave a high-five to the missile man. When they resumed their volley, it was cover for a squad of six who ran low across the street and into the entrance. They stepped over a body in military fatigues and a red beret and they went up the stairs. Omar Yussef hadn’t noticed that anyone had been hit. He stared at the body and willed it to move. He wondered if he ought to call Doctor Najjar and tell him not to go home just yet; he would be needed soon at the morgue.

The smoke cleared around the third floor, where the missile had hit. Only a small hole, the size of a man’s head, showed in the wall, but there were flames inside. Omar Yussef figured the sofas and armchairs must have ignited. Movement was visible in the room. Some shots sounded, and men came down the stairs quickly.

General Moussa Husseini appeared at the foot of the stairs. He was naked except for a pair of baggy white underpants. His big stomach was covered with thick white hair and his legs looked too skinny to support his fat torso. His bald, dark forehead was laced with streams of blood. One of the gunmen shoved him from behind. He slipped on the pool of gore seeping from his dead guard and tripped over the corpse’s legs, tumbling down the steps. The gunmen followed, kicking him. He scrambled on his knees into the street.

“It can’t be,” Khamis Zeydan said.

Husseini’s face was contorted, weeping. One of the gunmen stood behind him, lifted his Kalashnikov and shot him through the neck.

It was a sudden, single shot. Omar Yussef inhaled quickly.

The same gunman emptied his magazine into Husseini’s body. The attackers walked briskly to their jeeps and pulled away. Some went down the beach road, while a couple turned up Omar al-Mukhtar Street toward the center of town. General Husseini lay on his face in the road.

Omar Yussef put his forehead against the window and closed his eyes. Khamis Zeydan laid his hand on Omar Yussef’s shoulder. He tilted his head toward the street. “Come on,” he said.

“Do you think it’s safe?” Omar Yussef asked.

Khamis Zeydan shrugged. “Safe or not, unless you want to settle for the official version, we’d better go and check things out.” He hit his shoulder on the wardrobe as he made unsteadily for the door and, when he cursed, he left a cloud of whisky vapor that made Omar Yussef cough.

They were the first to climb the drive of the hotel and reach the scene. Omar Yussef’s legs felt as though his thigh bones had been turned ninety degrees in his hip sockets- his feet rejected any straight line he commanded them to follow and his pelvis was full of pins and needles. His body was exhausted after the nightmares that had ruined his sleep. But whatever dreams had tormented him, they were surely better than being awake in Gaza.

Khamis Zeydan knelt by Husseini’s body. The road was empty. “Where are the police?” Omar Yussef said.

“Husseini must have forgotten to dial the emergency operator.” Khamis Zeydan raised a sarcastic eyebrow. He felt peremptorily for a pulse in Husseini’s neck.

Omar Yussef looked down at the shattered back of the skull and the gashes in the rear of the plump torso where the gunman had fired on automatic. Excrement filled Husseini’s baggy white underpants and the dust had already settled a gritty layer over the bullet wounds. “How terrible.”

“At least he died with his fingertips intact,” Khamis Zeydan said.

Omar Yussef stared at his friend. “Even the worst of men deserves to be respected in death,” he said.

“Take it easy. You know exactly what I’m saying. Let’s have a look in his house.” They stepped over the dead guard at the entrance to the building and the blood pooling around him.

The door to the third floor salon was open. The foam in the couches smoldered, filling the room with choking smoke. There was a black blast mark on the center of the ceiling, where the crystal chandelier had been, and glass crunched underfoot.

“The missile came through the wall and struck the ceiling there,” Khamis Zeydan said. “Anyone in this room would’ve been caught by shrapnel from the missile.”

“Or pieces of the chandelier.”

Behind the long dining table, Omar Yussef found the coffee boy on his back, his arms wide and a bullet through his bony, acned cheek. His eyes were open. He looked no more than a little dazed, but he was quite dead. Omar Yussef glanced down the corridor. Two more guards lay twisted and motionless.

The shelves of crystal along the far wall had collapsed. Husseini’s collection of bottles and glasses and plates lay shattered across the marble tiles. Omar Yussef bent stiffly and picked up the neck of a smashed decanter.

“Just as all this was starting, Doctor Najjar called me from the morgue,” he said. “He found the stopper from one of these in Bassam Odwan’s throat. The prisoner choked on it.”

Khamis Zeydan sniffed a dark liquid at the bottom of another piece of partially smashed crystal. “Brandy. Do you suppose Husseini asked Odwan over for a cozy drink?”

Khamis Zeydan went into the other rooms to look around. Omar Yussef weighed the neck of the decanter in his hand and rolled it against the soft part of his throat below his Adam’s apple. Its cold touch on his sagging skin returned him to the choking moments of his nightmare. He shuddered and he put it on the table.

A siren approached along the beach road. Omar Yussef felt his pulse tick faster. When you hear a siren, he thought, you can’t help but think that they’re coming for you. A turquoise police jeep rolled to a halt near Husseini’s body. Five policemen jumped from the back of the jeep and an officer joined them from the front seat. They stood in an indecisive huddle a few yards from the corpse. The officer approached Husseini and stood over him. He pushed back his blue beret and scratched his forehead.

Khamis Zeydan came to watch at Omar Yussef’s shoulder. “I look forward to an energetic investigation from the security forces,” he said, smiling.

“Don’t you have a meeting to go to?”

“What’s wrong with you?” Khamis Zeydan said, surprised by his friend’s angry tone.

“You people on the Revolutionary Council, you kill one another and then you hold a meeting and you make peace until the next time you decide to murder each other,” Omar Yussef shouted. “Meanwhile, it’s ordinary people like that poor damned coffee boy on the floor over there who pay the price.”

“You think I like it that way?”

“You seem to do all right from this system, despite your cynicism about it.”

“What do you mean?” Khamis Zeydan put a cigarette in his mouth and reached into his pocket for his lighter.

“Who’s paying for your nice hotel room? And your expensive dinners? And your apartment in Bethlehem? And the booze you reek of right now? And the stupid smokes that are killing you?” Omar Yussef slapped the cigarette from Khamis Zeydan’s mouth.

The police commander on the road below looked up at the third floor window. He pointed and spoke to two of his men, who ran toward Husseini’s building.

“The cigarettes? You’re worried about my health?” Khamis Zeydan took another cigarette from his pocket and lit it. “I didn’t know you cared, my dear.”

“Don’t make a joke of this.”

“Back home in Bethlehem, I admit you’d be right to worry about me,” Khamis Zeydan said. He gripped Omar Yussef’s arm, his eyes wide and excited. “But in Gaza you’ve got it all wrong. In Bethlehem I drink because of depression, loneliness, disgust with my life. In Gaza it’s all action, and I have to admit that I thrive on it. The smoke-filled rooms, the dirty maneuvers, and the violence. In Gaza, I drink because it’s part of the biggest buzz imaginable. Even this incident this morning gives me a kick.”

Omar Yussef pushed the police chief’s hand away.

“It’s true,” Khamis Zeydan said. “Here I am, the man you call your friend. I’m not proud of it and I wouldn’t tell anyone else, but Gaza feels like the good old days, back in Lebanon with the Old Man, before we messed everything up.”

“By Allah, what could be more messed up than Gaza?” Omar Yussef said.

“The truth is, we should’ve stayed underground forever. We can’t govern.”

“This place is governed according to the rules of the Middle Ages.”

“Come on, history teacher. No lectures.”

There were footsteps on the staircase.

“Feuding emirs, unnamable fear you can taste in every particle of dust in this storm, and death,” Omar Yussef said. “Death even for those like Husseini who’re accustomed to wielding it.” Omar Yussef grabbed his friend’s shoulders so that their faces were close. “That’s not history. That’s the present.”

One of the policemen arrived in the doorway, panting. He leveled his Kalashnikov. Omar Yussef laughed with a rasping exhalation. He walked toward the door.

“Identify yourself,” the policeman said. He was slim and young and his thin mustache twitched.

Omar Yussef glared at him. “I’m the Emir Saladin, that’s who I am. Now get out of my way, I’m going to eat breakfast. There’s a boy in that room who’s dead because you were too busy eating your breakfast to do your job.”

The policeman stepped back and dropped the barrel of his rifle to his knees. A second policeman came up the stairs, breathing heavily. He looked with confusion at Omar Yussef and leaned against the banister to let him pass.